Landships II

kingkong92 · Sergeant

Airfix tank

Rob · Legend

Both the same still, but with different sponsons - although with the Female kit you get the Male sponsons included

Ironsides · Legend

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The Airfix kit is very much a mixture but close enough to the MKII which did see action, basically no steering tail no cab hatch and a few other minor things and only males became supply tanks or tanks fitted with male sponsons, I dont know why they released two kits as the female has the male parts as well so is probarbly better value additional decals are available from Black Lion..

Cheers smile

Mark Hansen · Legend

Actually the Mk II and Mk I supply tanks did have the cab roof hatch. It's one of the features which shows part of Bovington's Mk II service history. Airfix copied it rather well (unfortunately) so it's one of the features that doesn't need modifying if you're making a supply tank.

Ironsides · Legend

Hi Mark, Cab Hatch yes but only as a supply tank,�I was talking about the original spec as a combat tank without modifications... maybe I didnt make that clear...

Cheers wink

James H · Legend

IMO the Female sponsons are a massive improvement on the Male. The gun shields are a much tighter fit and assembly and fitting of the MGs is far less fiddly than the 6pdr.

@ Mark H - that's interesting. Presumably the hatches were fitted by Workshops?

PDA · Legend

kingkong92 wrote:
Hello everyone.
Im looking at buying one of airfix's new release mk1s which one do you all recommend, male or female?
Which ones closest to the real ones?
Are the new releases closer to a mark 2 supply tank still?
Sam

Sam, as you can tell from the comments here, the "new" Airfix Mark I female is just the old Airfix Mark I male with an extra sprue containing the parts for the female sponsons. If you want a male, buy that one as it is cheaper.

The only changes that Airfix made, were to clean up the molds a little, so some of the sink marks are gone. The female sponsons were measured at the same time (1966? 1967?) as Airfix measured the Mark II tank in Bovington Tank Museum; it was displayed as a Mark I with a male sponson and a female sponson and the tail wheels from a Mark I. The Tank Museum didnt get a real Mark I until 1970. Airfix were not very careful about measuring the tank, however, and as a result have introduced some features that were not, and are not, present on the Mark II, and have missed some other features entirely.

The kit(s) is/are riddled with faults and problems, but for some unfathomable reason people like it/them. All I can see in its favour, is that it is one of only two available plastic/styrene kits of rhomboids; the other being the Emhar kits.

This review, although old, still applies, because Airfix have changed nothing, despite having some 40 years to make corrections.

(And, no, nobody from Airfix reads comments from modellers in magazines or on the internet, so I'm not concerned about hurting their feelings!)

�

Rob · Legend

If you want to make a Female Mk 2, you'll need to source Lewis guns for the sponsons - i'm not aware of any decent ones, hopefully WD Models will make the one I saw a while back - the Matador Models Lewis guns are useless and went straight in the bin